Demonic Oppression No More: Nichole Henson’s Journey | Ep 29

JemeseHost00:00

There is a side to mental health that is more than just disease or medical. Sometimes the mental health disorder is actually a demonic influence, and how do you discern the difference? How do you know when it is more than just a chemical imbalance or something like this that should be addressed medically versus something that is being demonically influenced? When we don’t talk about this, we are leaving people exposed to suffering and torment that Jesus came to make us all free from. If you have ever suffered with an undiagnosable mental health disorder or if you have ever been told by doctors I don’t know what the matter is, you definitely want to listen to this episode and hear how our guest, Nicole Henson, got free. Here’s a content warning. This episode speaks candidly about experiences of childhood sexual abuse, about self-harm and cutting about suicide. Please utilize discernment before you listen to this episode.

01:17

This is a new creation podcast where we are pointing women towards victory in Christ, one Jesus story at a time. My name is Janice Lachelle. I’m a licensed clinical social worker and a Christian trauma therapist. I’m so happy that you’re here with us. Let’s dive right in, All right. Well, welcome back, friends, to the podcast. I am very excited to introduce to you today Nicole. She’s an author, a biblical teacher, minister and a public speaker, but she would tell you that the most important thing about her is that she’s a follower of Jesus Christ. He miraculously set her free from years of torment that resulted from childhood abuse, and he’s commissioned her to help others walk in victory. Welcome to the show, Nicole.

NicholeHost02:04

Thank you so much for the invite. I’m happy to be here.

JemeseHost02:07

There’s so many women who have a background of very hard things child abuse and just very ugly things and the opportunity to talk about it transparently is so beautiful. I want to hear, we want to hear all about how the Lord let you through that to the point where now you’re able to help other people.

NicholeHost02:29

Amen, I’m happy to share. You know, early on God said you’re going to be very transparent in your ministry and I didn’t know exactly what that meant. Now, four years into it, I’m like oh, he means I’m going to share about pretty much everything, so I’m ready to share as transparently as possible about pretty much everything, so I’m ready to share as transparently as possible.

JemeseHost02:48

Amen, praise God. So before we get into that, we always like to pray before we get started. Would you please pray for our listener today?

NicholeHost02:55

Absolutely so. Father, right now I just praise you and I bless you and I thank you for your goodness God. I thank you for this podcast and for this opportunity to talk about your goodness God. I pray for each lady and gentleman listening. God, I pray that you would touch their heart. I pray that we would speak something that would minister to each and every person, that every person would walk away knowing you more deeply and also having a desire to get closer to you and having a desire to learn about you on a personal level, to where they want to have a personal relationship with you, not just where someone tells them about you, but where they really learn about you for themselves.

03:31

God, I pray that you would touch each heart that is broken and hurting. I pray that you would bring your healing. You are the healer, you’re the only one who can heal perfectly and, god, I pray that you would bring each person on their journey of discovery and journey of healing to you, and I pray that you would bring each person on their journey of discovery and journey of healing to you, and I pray that you would be more real to them than you’ve ever been in their entire life. In Jesus name, I pray, amen amen.

JemeseHost03:55

So I always like to ask, to start out with this what is your Jesus story? Tell us how you found your faith.

NicholeHost04:03

I to kind of take you back a little ways, because I’ve been a Christian. I was trying to figure this out yesterday and I forgot to do the math. I’m 45 or 46. When you get my age, it just really doesn’t matter that much anymore. And so I got saved when I was 18. And I grew up in a house where my family was Christians, like my grandparents house where my family was Christians, like my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, but my mom wasn’t, and it took me a while to find the Lord. You know he was always there, but it took me a while to come to him.

04:33

I was born into a home that was full of domestic violence. My mom and dad were very young when they got married and my biological dad was very narcissistic. He was the type of abuser that the entire world had to revolve around him and if it didn’t, he threw a fit. He was horrifically abusive toward my mom and when I was around three years old they got divorced and he stayed in Florida with his family and she moved back to Indiana with her family and she took me with her. But he had visitation every, every other Christmas and every summer I spent with him, and so I spent a lot of time with him. You know way too much time when the person is abusive. He did not physically abuse me as far as hitting me and those types of things. Years old he met a new woman. He was never alone. He was very codependent and when I went for a visit I could tell things were very, very different and he had gotten involved in the occult. He had gotten involved in Satanism. He was into very deep, dark, scary things, especially as a child who had never been exposed to that Because my mom’s family were all Christians.

05:45

You know I was going to church on Sundays. I was going on Wednesdays. My grandparents cleaned the church, so we were there throughout the week and then to be thrown into the exact opposite where there was witchcraft, crystals, magic killing animals for sacrifices. You know all of that. It was traumatizing. I mean, that’s probably not even the right word. It was horrific. And then that’s when the sexual abuse, I know for sure, started. I think I have memories prior to that, but I know for sure it started then. That led me on a road very far from God. For many, many years I was trying to fill the void in my heart with all kinds of things and they all led to nothingness.

06:30

I got involved with older men at a very young age. When I was around 13 or 14, I started seeking out men who were 24, 25. And you know, sexual activity with them. I was very depressed. I had eating disorders, disorder going on, I had clinical depression, ptsd, and I just never felt comfortable in my own skin. I never felt wanted in any setting. I hated myself. I hated everything, everybody. I was very rebellious but I was also very moody. My moods were all over the place. At school I hated going because I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t fit in there. If the teacher would call on me, I would lie and say I didn’t know the answer. Even if I did, just because I did not want to talk in front of people. The thought of talking in front of people just about made me vomit. So that’s kind of where life was.

07:31

And when I was 16, I met my first husband and in my family it was very common for the women to get married young. It was just our culture in our family, our culture and our family, and I think my grandma was like 15. My mom was 17. I think one of my aunts was in there they were in their teens. It was very rare for us to hit 20 and not be married. You know you was an old maid if you made it to 20. And so at 16, I got married for the first time. Don’t recommend that to anybody.

08:01

There was a lot of violence in that marriage. Domestic violence started within weeks and it was very, very difficult. We both were very toxic for each other and we brought out the worst in each other. But I have been trained by my biological dad to not tell. You know, love hurts and those that love you most they hurt you the most. And that was normal. It was natural. It was comfortable. The chaos was comfortable. But what happened in that is?

08:26

In the meantime, my mom and stepdad. They started going to church and my mom had never really went before, but my brother started having seizures and she went to pray and she knew she didn’t want to pray because she wasn’t serving God. She knew enough to know that she was going to ask from him without giving anything to him. So she got saved pretty much immediately and they started going to church. Well, they invited my husband at the time and I to go and we went and we met with the pastor one on one and he walked us through like the plan of salvation and I knew my whole life. I knew because I’d been raised around the church. I knew I was running from God. I knew that my life would never be better unless I surrendered to God.

09:09

And I also had really weird things happen as a teenager, like I would be laying in bed and I would hear somebody walk in my room and nobody would be there. I’d turn around and nobody would be there. I would hear things scratching on the walls. I would have like jewelry. I would go to sleep and jewelry would be missing off my body and then I would wake up the next day looking for it, couldn’t find it and then the next day it would be laying on my pillow, like here I am, or it would be laying on my dresser and I just always felt like there was something on my back like looking at me, chasing me. There were times I was chased out of my bedroom because I thought a presence in there and in those times I would take a Bible and put it under my pillow.

09:44

So it’s like I always knew that God was there and I also knew I wasn’t surrendered to him. I can remember praying Lord, please don’t let me die, because if I do I know I’m going to hell. So it wasn’t ever that I thought, oh, I’m okay. I knew I wasn’t okay, but I wasn’t ready to surrender. But when we met with him, I was like at a place in my life where I was on my last straw. I was being beaten by my husband. I just had a new baby. We were very desperate financially. The depression was horrific, and so I gave my heart to the Lord, and that was when I was 18. And I immediately got very heavily involved in the church. So that’s my salvation story.

JemeseHost10:28

Praise God for that. What a journey to get there. And I wonder if, looking back, can you I mean, you’ve kind of touched on this Looking back, you can see that God, he was there, he was with you. You can say, you know how scripture tells us he doesn’t leave us or forsake us. Looking back, you can see these moments where he was leading you enough to know that, okay, the bible. There’s something in here for me. I’m going to put this under my pillow, or you know, you hadn’t.

10:57

You had gotten far from him, but not so far that he couldn’t reach you.

NicholeHost11:01

Yeah, yeah, and I mean I always knew because, like there was a time that I got really curious what all I had been exposed to in the occult and I never practiced witchcraft myself, but I got really curious about it, like what is this all about? What’s going on? And I went to the library and I checked out the satanic Bible and I brought it home and I had, from the time of a young kid, felt presence like dark presence in my, in my room and those types of things. But when I brought that home, it was something I had never experienced before. It was so dark and I knew. I knew that I needed to get it. Like I just innately knew, okay, that’s got to go. And I knew that I needed to put a Bible under my bed and under my pillow.

11:48

But I wasn’t serving God and I didn’t understand. Even after getting saved, I didn’t understand my authority in Christ. I spent many, many years in bondage because I did not understand my identity or my authority in Christ. Once I got saved, I thought, oh, you know what? Everything is going to be beautiful, everything’s going to be amazing, everything is just going to be fixed. I’m going to get saved and it’s going to automatically just fix. And that didn’t happen and I was saved and I was going to heaven, which is an amazing thing, and I’m not minimizing that whatsoever. I had amazing community around me. I had Bible study to go to. I had amazing community around me. I had Bible study to go to. I had people to learn from. I could hear God’s voice. I could hear him speak into me, laying things on my heart. So that was amazing. But I still struggled so bad with depression and anxiety and fear and worry and physical sickness. It took years, years, years, from 18 till my early 40s, to get free, because I just didn’t understand how to walk in that freedom.

JemeseHost12:52

Yeah, the believer’s authority. That is something that the church Big C. I feel like that is something that we miss it sometimes. I feel like a lot of times people come into the faith understanding and knowing that, yes, jesus is the way I know, that I need him, and I mean, I have that same kind of naive thought all my problems disappear now. But the reality is that you still have to walk out your authority and your identity. Like that was a whole new ballgame for me. I had no idea. What do you mean? Jesus says that, what do you mean? I pick up the Bible and it tells me who God says that I am. I had no idea about that. And so, if you don’t know that, right, if you, if you don’t know that, yeah, it will feel like you are still living in bondage. And so tell us, how did that come about you even learning these terms authority in Christ and how did that come about? How did he lead you through that journey?

NicholeHost14:01

Well, when I very first got saved, like I said, I was 18 and people started prophesying over me and I started feeling the Lord lay on my heart that he was going to use me to help heal other people Not that I would be doing it, but that he was going to use me in a ministry to help facilitate that and I’m like, okay, Lord, let’s do it. And then you know it never. You’re not usually told something one day and then you step into it day two that there’s usually a process and it just was not happening. And I was getting sicker and sicker, emotionally and physically. I stayed with my first husband for about six years and then I saw the damage it was doing to our child the last time that he had really exploded and it was bad. I saw the look on my son’s face and I’m like I can’t do this to him anymore, and so I left him and I moved back in with my parents, but I still had codependency. I still was not able to stand on my own. I never wanted to be alone. So I was married again within a year because I never wanted to be by myself. Thankfully, he was a very good man. He is a very good man. I’m married to him now. We’ve been married 20 plus years. Very godly man, very good man. And when I married him, everybody in my life thought, okay, now you’re in a safe spot, Now things are going to just be great. You’re saved, You’re involved in the church, you have a good husband, he’s a good provider.

15:28

And my whole world fell apart because I think for the first time, I wasn’t in chaos. I didn’t know what to do outside of chaos. I didn’t know how to function. Chaos was my norm. Covering up abuse was my norm. Feeling afraid all the time was my norm. I didn’t know how to be safe. I didn’t know how to be in a relationship where if I pushed him he wouldn’t hit me and I tried, I pushed and pushed and pushed and he would not fight back. I didn’t know how to be healthy and non-toxic. Also, I started getting sick physically. I started having like just the weirdest things happen. I would get diagnosis that where I would hear things like chronic. It will never get better, you just have to manage the symptoms like. My diagnosis felt like there was a mile long and I started having surgeries and procedures and just I was getting sicker physically. So I went back to school to be a family therapist because I thought, okay, well, maybe that’s how God’s going to use me. Family therapist because I thought, okay, well, maybe that’s how God’s going to use me. And I started practicing and I practiced for about. I practiced two different times for a year each and it was horrific because I was not healed at all and I was going and listening to children tell me all day long about their sexual abuse. So I would go home in the evening and have to cut just to make it through the evening with my family. And it was getting worse and worse and worse. So I started back into therapy for myself.

16:49

When I was in therapy, she diagnosed me, of course, with the clinical depression and the PTSD, but she also diagnosed me with DID and it was not a shock to me Dissociative identity disorder. For anyone that doesn’t recognize that is, the idea behind it is that whenever you go through trauma, especially as a young child, you can split into different personalities, different parts of yourself, and you all live in the same body. And I knew, like I knew that because I’d heard voices for years. I recognized them, I knew their names, they talked to me, I talked to them. But to have that diagnosis really was like a huge wake up call to me that I was really, really sick, and so I stopped practicing. I walked away from mental health and I’m like you know it’s not ethical at all Because I was in such a bad place.

17:36

Part of my therapy was learning to coexist with all of the voices in my head and to integrate, and so I started letting them write through me. I let them talk through me, I let them express their emotions through me, and they would always try to get me to give them the driver’s seat and they would always want me to step back and just let them be in control. They would say I’ll let you rest, it will be better, and I never would completely turn over anything my body to them. But I gave them a lot, of, lot of leeway. I was very protective of them because the idea in my mind was this happened because I’m abused, so I’m accepting them and everybody in my life better accept them. But they hated everybody. They hated my son, they hated my husband, they hated my children or my family, my mom and dad. They hated God, because they would always say God let you down, he didn’t keep you safe. We’ll keep you safe, but he didn’t keep you safe. If he loves you, why did he let you go through that? Your family is just out to get you. It was like just that constant paranoia. So life went on like that for many years.

18:43

Around 2019, my son messaged me and he said Mom, I think this minister may have something that would be interesting to you. Now, mind you, I’ve been in the church. It wasn’t like I wasn’t in the church, but I wasn’t in churches that ever taught anything about spiritual warfare. We believed in laying hands on the sick and that God could heal, that he would bring miracles, signs and wonders, but I was never exposed to anything about spiritual warfare, which is very interesting to me looking back, like what we did believe but what we never touched. It’s just an odd thing to me, but anyway. So whenever he told me that I listened to the message and the very first message I listened to was about deliverance and when I say deliverance I mean closing doors to demons, verbally, casting them out in the name of Jesus, and then maintaining that freedom afterwards and I’m like that’s me, that’s exactly what I need. I just knew in my spirit I’m like that, that’s exactly what I need. And so I reached out to that minister and I asked him if he recommended any books or any literature or anything. And he did. He recommended a few books. I bought them but then I didn’t read them.

19:47

I lost like a year and I can’t really tell you what all I was doing in that year. I know I was going back and forth to the Mayo Clinic because I had something with my excuse me my breathing going on. They couldn’t get it diagnosed. We was doing all kinds of testing. There were times I thought I was going to be choked to death, that I just couldn’t breathe. There were times I thought I was going to be choked to death, that I just couldn’t breathe. There were times I was almost rushed to the hospital because I just could not breathe. I was on breathing treatments, breathing machines. My mental health was getting so bad that I was fighting suicidal ideation pretty much every day. There were times that I would just have to tell my husband you know you’re going to have to hide the weapon any weapons in the house, because it’s getting so strong. It was bad. It was bad PTSD, hundreds of triggers, and so towards the end of that year we’re up to 2020.

20:36

God told me to set aside a week for fasting and prayer and I said okay, I can do that. You know I was right. I was like at that point there were nights I would go to sleep not knowing if I was going to wake up, Like I literally didn’t know if I was going to wake up. And then he said make it public. And I’m like Lord, don’t, nobody care if I’m praying, Nobody’s going to pray for me, Nobody needs to pray for me. Because I felt so worthless. I’m like why would I put it on social media for people to feel sorry for me? Because I also wanted to look strong and be strong and not be weak, and I didn’t think anybody would care. And so I put it on social media and people from all over started just messaging me. I had people send me cards, tell me they were thinking of me, people sending me words from God that he had scriptures he had given for me. The outpouring was just absolutely amazing and I knew it was him showing me his love.

21:24

He also told me to have my parents come over, and when I say parents, that’s my mom and stepdad, not biological dad. He’s deceased and I said, God, they live two hours away. I don’t want to ask them to have to drive all this way, Will you please tell them? And then my mom called just a few minutes later and she said you know, I just really feel like God’s saying we need to come over and lay hands on you and pray, and I’m like okay. So I sent them a little bit of information about deliverance ministry. Mind you, we had not been. This was not our our thing, we had not been around this. It wasn’t that we doubted, it just wasn’t even on our radar. And so I sent them a little bit of information. So we knew, going in, that there was some demonic activity. We had no idea how much, if maybe it was 50-50, you know, 50 mental illness from abuse, 50% demonic. We had no idea.

22:12

And so, leading up to that, God really was working on my heart in a lot of areas. One was to stop questioning him why the abuse happened. And I had always held on to that and I’d always told him if you would just give me that answer, I know I can be healed. So I was dictating to him you know how I needed to be healed. Of course we know that always works out. And so I just kept telling him God, I need that answer, I need to know why it happened, Because the voices in my head were constantly saying if God loved you, that wouldn’t have happened. Something’s wrong with you. He can’t love you, You’re wrong, You’ll never be good enough, you are full of, you know, dirtiness. And so I just felt like I needed that answer. And he showed me a vision and I saw two paths, and on one path it was continuing to hold my question and basically demanding please give me an answer. And the other one was completely releasing it and laying it down. And that was a new path, a new way, and it was the path to healing. And so I released that. That was something major that I completely and totally released.

23:16

He also told me in that week that I had not honored my biological dad. That was very, very difficult when he told me that, Not gonna lie, I had a little bit of problem with that and it took me a little while to pray through that and I did, and I sat with him and then I really got honest and I’m like OK, Lord, I’m really ready for you to show me what you mean. And what he was saying was is that I spoke badly about him. I didn’t care if he was saved or not. I didn’t care if he went to heaven or hell. I didn’t necessarily want him to go to hell, but I didn’t care if he did. I didn’t care. I didn’t look at him with any redeeming qualities. I didn’t look at him as someone that God would want to redeem.

23:53

And so I asked the Lord you know, I repented for it, of course and then I asked the Lord would I have had to have had a relationship with him, Because he was already deceased at the time? And it wasn’t about relationship, it was about keeping my mouth shut and not dishonoring him with my words and then praying for his soul. And so that was a huge lesson. But after I did that, I was able not pray for his soul he was already gone but repent for it. I was able then to fully and completely and totally forgive, and so he just kept leading me through deeper levels of repentance and cleansing.

24:23

So when my mom and dad came, they walked in and immediately I wanted to physically claw my dad’s eyes out, Like there was something in me that just wanted to physically attack him, and I knew it was on. I’m like I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s something going on and it took four and a half hours of commanding demons to leave, commanding them to release me, asking them, you know, do they have a legal right left to my life? And four and a half hours later, between 45 and 60 demons were cast out and I had zero mental illness and I’ve not had any mental illness symptoms since May 24th 2020. So in my case, it was 100% demonic torment and that was a long answer to your question, but that was my journey to freedom for the mental illness.

JemeseHost25:10

That’s the perfect answer. That’s what people want to hear, because it just needs to be talked about more. It really does so. The Lord has positioned me in the marketplace as a counselor and therapist, filled with the spirit of God, to offer solutions to people who are experiencing. Yes, mental health does exist. Yes, but there’s also another side there. There’s demonic influence and we need to be talking about that. People need freedom, because where do you go?

25:45

You know, what stood out to me is um, as you were sharing is, you said that deliverance, spiritual warfare, that was not something that your mom and stepdad or yourself had a background in, but yet they came, they followed the, they followed the leading of the lord and were able, by the power of god within them, to cast out these demons. How incredible. What tell us about that? Because I think sometimes people feel like they have to be like expert bible scholars. Or you know it’s only the pastor, or you know, know only a special person. But you’re, you’re literally saying that the Lord, he organized this, he had mom call you and say God told me I’m supposed to come and then, boom, you got your freedom.

NicholeHost26:40

We honestly had no idea what we was going into Like like we did not know. We learned so much that day when I talk about cause. I went in, I started doing deliverance ministry. After that I started doing one-on-one sessions with people a lot of them and I’m like God just threw us in the deep end, because that’s how we learned. What we did was 100% relied on the Holy spirit, because when my parents came in so immediately I felt like that, physically wanting to attack my dad, I had to sit on my hands. I was sitting on my hands because it was manifesting that bad. I started laughing and a voice that wasn’t mine started coming out and talking and saying look at him, who does he think he is? He’s so stupid, he thinks he’s somebody. And so they knew immediately that that wasn’t me and my dad. Just he said, ok, lord, what do I do? You know? In his mind he was praying God, what do I do? And he just said I command you, in the name of Jesus, to get out. I command you to leave. And that worked for that one. It left. That one went pretty easy. For that one, it left. That one went pretty easy.

27:49

There was another one that he was commanding and commanding to go. I mean just that. In the name of Jesus, I command you to leave, I command you to release her, I command you to get out. You have no power here. And it was not going. And I felt in my spirit that the Lord saying to me it’s because I had accepted it as part of myself, saying to me it’s because I had accepted it as part of myself, it was one of the altars that I accepted as, or it was what I thought was an altar and I had. I could see our identity was intertwined around each other because I had so accepted it and I had to verbally tell it you are not part of me and I’m not part of you. You are not welcome here anymore and I break agreement with you. When I did that, then immediately it left.

28:30

There was another one that they couldn’t see my face because it was in the trash can. Sometimes I mean I was vomiting, I was screaming, yelling, spitting. I was sitting across the room from my dad and it’s not humanly impossible, but I literally spit on him and it landed in his face. It shouldn’t have been possible. At one point I picked up a trash can to throw at him and it just landed flat in front of me Like there was a hand that just put it down in front of me. I couldn’t get up off my seat. I would try and I couldn’t. It was like there was a hand holding me down. At one point I felt being choked on my neck Because, you know, back then again, we didn’t know, we didn’t know to go in and bind all that first.

29:12

We learned, you bind up all that first, but we didn’t know that. And so there was like a hand around my throat choking me, and so I whispered I can’t breathe, and so my dad bound that, commanded it to stop. And then the strongest one that did not want to let go at all was one that said I had been dedicated to it in a blood ritual. And I don’t know why this was asked and I don’t even remember who asked it. But they said somebody said what do you mean a blood ritual? And it innocent blood was spilled and she was given to me by her dad. And so the Lord just told my dad plead the blood of Jesus over that. Tell it. Nothing is stronger than the blood of Jesus, and I mean he really was being led by the Holy Spirit with every word he was saying. He didn’t have a script, he didn’t know what to say. God was telling him, the Holy Spirit was telling him. And there was another part where and my dad doesn’t he’s not one who sees visions, but during this he was seeing visions and God was showing him what to do. He saw a demon that had a pouch and in that pouch was seeds, and he knew it was seeds to my life, like seeds to my health, seeds to my calling, seeds to ministry, seeds to finances. And he commanded that demon to let go of my seed and return the seed to my life. And he saw the pouch open and it returned it to me. Trying to think of some of the others oh, there was another one that it spoke through me and it started laughing and it said I make her fat, I make her eat and eat and eat and she’s never full. And at that point I was almost 300 pounds.

30:46

I was heavily, heavily addicted to sugar and food in general. And before I went through that deliverance, god told me, about four days prior, to stop consuming sugar. And that felt impossible because I every drug behavior, drug addiction behavior you could have I had towards sugar. That’s how bad it was, and I don’t say that lightly, like I’m not making fun, I’m serious. I had sugar addiction and so I had stopped and then whenever we went through that, I knew that was removing its legal right to my life. Had I not stopped and fasted sugar, it still would have had a stronghold in my life. So that one came out and immediately the food addiction was broken. Now what I still have is me working on being healthy and going to the gym consistently and eating right, but the food addiction is gone.

31:33

So there was a lot and I remember some of it. Some of it I don’t remember some of it. They’ve told me a lot of voices, a lot of screaming. I could feel them. When they would come out, I would feel their personality. So I would recognize which one it was, because I would feel their personality and their emotions, because when they were in me I operated my life on their emotions. So once they came out, I thought that I was.

32:02

I always thought I was an angry person. I thought I’m a type of person that you don’t want to cross, even as a Christian. I was ready to fight and I was ready to get an attitude. I loved getting on social media and stirring up drama, fighting, arguing, going back and forth with each other. I loved confrontation didn’t bother me a bit and I just thought that was my part of my personality. I thought, well, I went through domestic violence and it flipped a switch in me and now I’m I don’t mind confrontation.

32:34

Once I got the spirits of anger out, I found I’m not even an angry person. Like it takes a lot to get me angry. I’ve never lost control since then. I’ve never like even yelled. Since then I’m a very sensitive person. I cry at the drop of a hat and prior to that I never cried. If I cried you better run, because that meant I was mad and I was ready to go into a blackout rage. Now I’m super sensitive. I cry over everything, not in a bad way, like I’m not like my emotions all over the place, but just I can feel. Before it was like I was numbed. I could not feel I went through my grandmother passing away and barely responding to that because I just had such muted emotions. So life changed in a lot of ways.

JemeseHost33:18

Empathically yeah, it’s praise God, praise God, and it’s like you got your. You got the life that you were supposed to have. You got that back. And so I think I’m always hearing, I’m always listening for the hope. And so what I’m hearing in your story is that, even though, even though the devil meant harm for you, even though you were involved with um, just living in an atmosphere full of occultic activity, even though the lord’s hand was still so mighty to save and like that was not there was nothing that your biological father could have done to have stopped the Lord, god Almighty, from stepping in and saving his daughter. You are his daughter and so there is hope there for those who are living in secrecy, for um.

34:27

For those who are living in in secrecy, you know there’s like the occult comes in, all those kinds of things new age, that kind of stuff and it’s like a shroud of secrecy wants to come in with that and you don’t want to talk about it. I’m gonna keep it to yourself, don’t let people know, they’re gonna think you’re’re crazy, that kind of thing and so it’s just a miracle that you came from that background and God was able to use you know that scripture that says he uses the foolish things to confound the wise. You know your mom and stepdad. They didn’t as long as they were like trained deliverance ministers, but he used them. And now look at you. Today you’ve got a ministry and you’re helping others. Get free, tell us a little bit about that um, let me go back just a little bit.

NicholeHost35:12

I know my answers are always so long, but I feel like, without background, it just doesn’t. It doesn’t, um, explain it fully. Whenever I was going through that process, I had started looking into a few different deliverance ministers and it was like God just closed the door. One was like $400. And I’m like I don’t have $400. Others you had to fly to, you had to get a place to stay and then you had to pay them money and I’m like we’re on a fixed income, like that was not. And I just kept thinking Lord, why are you closing the doors? I know this is what’s wrong with me. Why are you closing the door? Well, I realized why. He was training us, he was raising us up and it was for a very specific reason. And I didn’t look that much. I just kind of casually looked around to see what there was. And then I realized quickly oh no, that’s not the way it’s going to be.

36:04

Whenever we went through that session, he spoke to me. I think I sat on the couch for like four hours just staring into nothing, because I was not used to my mind being quiet. But then he spoke to me and he said I set you free and I gave you the blueprint to get free. Now go help others get free. I said, ok, lord, you know, at that point I was really, I was willing to do anything still am. That’s not changed. But after witnessing something like that and feeling that, like I can’t describe to you the level of torment in my mind that I had, I try to even just go back there. You know, I wrote my testimony in a book and just trying to go back there and visit it doesn’t do it justice. Like I just can’t even describe to you what it was like. And then to go from that to being 100 percent free in my mind I was ready to give God anything Still am. And so when he said that and he also said your ministry is going to be very transparent, you’re going to be sharing a lot about your life I was like, ok, lord, and once he said that I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But then a few days later he said I want you to share your testimony. I said, okay, lord, they’re going to think I’m crazy. People already thought I’m crazy, but here we go. And so I shared it the first time on social media. I didn’t know what was going to happen first time and so I did it and I mean, it got like hundreds of hits immediately and I could not believe the number of people that were reaching out to me saying I need that, I need you to help me, and I’m thinking, okay, I guess this is what the Lord was talking about, and so I did.

37:43

I started taking people through the same process that he took me through. The part that he had shown me was closing doors through repentance, fasting prayer and then verbally commanding everything to leave. So I started doing that. I was doing a lot of one-on-one sessions with people from all around the world because they couldn’t find help in their own area. I also was learning more. I did find some people that I bought books, learned a lot from and those types of things.

38:13

Within that I wrote a manual and it ended up being like that thick to teach how to do deliverance ministry, because I felt him laying that on my heart and I started teaching that because I thought that there was some gaps in what I was seeing in the ministry and I’m not saying that nobody gets it right but me. That’s absolutely not what I’m saying at all, but I think that there are some overreaching gaps in some of the areas and not everybody. There’s a lot of people that do it and meet every area, but there’s also some mainstream folks out there that don’t teach a lot about closing doors and then walking to maintain the freedom. They just kind of get people free and then they leave them on their own and there’s not a lot of follow up on maintaining their freedom, and that there’s an issue in that. But anyway, and then I felt like he was laying it on my heart to start teaching about other subjects.

39:01

So I started doing a lot of teaching and then I wrote a book, and then I wrote another book about my testimony, and then he started leading me to a season of where I knew I was not going to be doing deliverance ministry anymore.

39:12

And that was kind of really hard for me because at the beginning I thought, okay, this is my, my, my home, this is where I’m going to be. I’m going to be doing deliverance ministry for years and years and years, but he would never let me build a team. I kept trying, and not because I was doing it by myself, I was doing it all online, all by myself. Well, I had a few sessions in person, but I would always have a prayer partner come whenever it was in person and it was really difficult because I can never build a team, but he would not let me. And then I realized, oh, I’ve just been doing this to train. I’ve been training to teach others what he’s taught me, and so I started doing like online conferences. I did a few in person and now I’m really just in a season of teaching, teaching, teaching.

JemeseHost39:55

So that’s kind of where I’m at now. Oh, I love that incredible. He’s the best teacher he is. He teaches us in ways that we would not have. There’s no way that we could fathom learning the lesson that way, but it ends up being so perfect and he’s just the best teacher. I love that. Praise God.

NicholeHost40:15

It’s been an amazing journey and he’s been so faithful every step of the way. You know, he just taught me. So I’ve been walking through a season of kind of just waiting to see where I go next. He had told me a while back, whenever I knew he was leading me away from doing the deliverance ministry, the way that I had been and was leading me into more of a teaching, and I’m like, ok, lord, I’ll let go of that whenever the next door opens, because I’m picturing I’m going straight out of one door into the next. You know, boom, boom, and he showed me you’re never going to get to that if you don’t let go of this. And that’s when I’m like, oh, and then he showed me what it really looked like.

40:54

There was a door at this end and a door at, and then a hallway and then a door at that end. I needed to move into the hallway and completely shut that door before I was ready for the next door, because there was some things he needed to teach me and some areas he needed to grow me and some things he needed to change about me. So I’ve been in the hallway in the preparation, but he’s so faithful to show us that he doesn’t leave us just wondering, like Lord what’s going on? Where am I at? You know he? Just he teaches us.

JemeseHost41:20

And I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that visual about the hallway. I love that. So my question is what would you tell someone who didn’t know Jesus as a person and I guess what I mean by that is before we come into the faith not speaking for everybody, but a lot of times it’s like you know that, you know God is good, devil, bad but there could be a disconnect between the fact that Jesus is a real person, he really is alive today, he really does love you, and so what would you tell someone who is maybe suffering through torment or isolation and they don’t know Jesus for themselves?

NicholeHost42:10

Well, I would kind of give this analogy. So, whatever area you’re suffering in, say that there was a doctor that could give you the cure. The doctor had the pill that would cure you. You could do one of two things you could read about him, you could ask other people about him, you could casually kind of glance at him in passing, or you could go up to him and talk to him and get to know him as a person and really seek him out so that you can get help from him. It’s the same thing with Jesus. We can learn about him, we can kind of know about him in passing and casually. But until you get to know him as Savior and Lord and Master and friend and brother and your everything, his healing doesn’t come. His healing flows from relationship with him and his freedom comes from relationship with him. You can know about him, but that’s different than knowing him. You need to know him and be in relationship with him. It’s all about relationship.

JemeseHost43:12

It is. It’s all about relationship. Growing up, I was in the Baptist church as a kid and I always would hear about this personal relationship with Jesus and it just did not make sense to me. I didn’t know what that, I didn’t know what it meant. But sometimes we overcomplicate things. You know, it really is as simple as the Lord Jesus is alive, he’s real, he’s a person. And how would you maintain a relationship with any person? How would you maintain your relationship with your husband, with your you know sister, your brother? You would spend time with them, you would go and sit with them, you would hang out together, you would, you know, you would pursue and that kind of thing. And so, yeah, there’s just an invitation to do that.

NicholeHost44:02

He extends that invitation to us there’s just an invitation to to do that, he extends that invitation to us. And I think too, you know, if you say, well, I don’t know him, I’m not sure. Get in the bible, start in the new testament, matthew, mark, luke and john. Read all about him, learn about him, see who he is, let him introduce himself to you through his word and fall in love with him based on who he is and based on his character. Once you know him, there’s no going back. Once you see his goodness there, there’s no going back amen, that is so true.

JemeseHost44:33

So, um, before we wrap up, I am just so led right now. Would you be willing to pray? I know we prayed already, but for the listener who is living in the secrecy of their torment where they’ve taken that identity on. I’m just so strongly led that somebody out there there’s a cry for help. Would you be willing to go there and just pray as you’re led?

NicholeHost45:08

Sure, father, god, right now I bless you and I thank you and I praise you, because you see every heart. You see into the hidden places, god. Sometimes it’s so easy to put a smile on our face and just pretend like everything is okay, but, god, you see every tear that is shed in private. God, I pray that you would go to that person right now. I pray that you would wrap your love around them. I pray that they would physically feel your love being wrapped around them. I pray that they would surrender their pain and their hurt and their torment to you, father God, I pray that in this moment they would cry out to you and let it out and stop holding it back. I pray that that dam of emotions would break in the name of Jesus and that they would be able to pour it out at your feet and that you would bring your healing and your peace and your joy and your hope.

45:57

Father God, I also pray you would bring people into their life. I pray you would bring understanding people who can support them and love them. I pray you would bring people that would pray for them, god, people that I’m reminded of the friends in the Bible that tore off the roof to lower their friend down to the feet of Jesus. God, I pray that you would bring that type of person into their life that would do war on their behalf. God, I pray that, if they feel like giving up, that you would offer your hope, father God, your tangible hope that would pull them back from the brink of giving up. God, I pray that if they feel like that they’re losing control or they’re losing their sanity, or they feel like they just want to lose their life, god, I pray that you would get a hold of them and draw them back to you. I pray that you would give them dreams and visions and scripture to speak your word and your life into them and over them. I pray that they would break off the lies of the enemy that says that it will never get better. God, that is a lie and we call it a lie. In the name of Jesus, I pray you would break off the lies that have attached to them, the lies that have attached to their identity. I pray they would be exactly who you created them to be, that they would break out of every false identity that the trauma has tried to place on them. I pray that you would bring clarity where there is confusion in their mind and racing thoughts. I pray you would comment. I pray you would speak. Peace be still to their mind and that you would bring peace and clarity. I pray you would rebuke chaos. In the name of Jesus, god, I pray that they would find a safe place where they could go, where they could be accepted, where they could be loved and where they could be heard. I pray that they would find safety.

47:33

In the name of Jesus, god, I pray if they’re in a place where they feel like they can’t share because of the position that they have, that it would be embarrassing or that it would cause people to look at them a certain way. God, I pray that you would give them peace to share their story, because they’re not the only one walking through this God. So many are hurting and suffering and they’re isolated because they’re scared to talk, they’re scared to bring it forward, they’re scared of being judged. God, I pray, in the name of Jesus, that you would give them strength to share their story. We have to start talking about these things. We have to bring them to the light in order for them to be healed. God, I pray that everything that’s done in the dark will be brought to the light, so that there can be healing and freedom and restoration. In the name of Jesus, god, I pray that you would speak your truth over their life and break the chains of the enemy. In Jesus name, amen.

JemeseHost48:28

Praise God. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. Tell us where we can find you. If there’s somebody listening today who wants to connect with your ministry, where can we find you online?

NicholeHost48:42

Absolutely so. I’m on Facebook. You can follow my personal page, nicole Hensley Henson. You can also find our ministry group. It’s fullness of joy ministry the one that is ours, because, it’s recently been brought to my attention, there’s another group on Facebook now with the same name. Ours is the one with the green succulents, like the green flowers across the banner. So if you see the green, that’s us. You can also find me on YouTube just under my name, nicole Henson. You can email me at fullnessofjoybyministries at gmailcom, and you can find our website at fullnessofjoycom.

JemeseHost49:16

Wonderful, and I will have all of these links in the show notes or description for everybody to click on. Thank you so much, nicole. This was so beautiful. What a beautiful testimony.

NicholeHost49:28

Thank you. I love getting to tell about the Lord.

JemeseHost49:31

Yes, and of his freedom and of the life that’s available in him. Praise God. That’s a wrap for this episode. Thank you all so much for tuning in, as always. And hey, if you want to keep up, go head over to my Instagram at Janice Lachelle. That’s where you’ll find information on this podcast. You’ll find information on my private practice where I am helping women with Christian trauma therapy and all that kind of good stuff. I will catch you on the flip side. I love you so much. I pray that the Lord blesses you and keeps you until we meet again.

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